Adam Lindemann’s Venus Over Manhattan Doubles Down on Downtown

Adam Lindemann’s enigmatic blue-chip gallery Venus Over Manhattan has abandoned the Upper East Side for a new location downtown. But, in typical Lindemann fashion, it’s not where you’d expect. Instead of setting up shop in TriBeCa, a neighborhood that Denny Demin and PPOW made so popular legacy players like Marian Goodman and David Zwirner Gallery soon started staking claims, Venus’s new location is on Great Jones Street in Noho, just a few steps away from a location they opened last year.

“I didn’t think we needed to be in Chelsea, it’s already full of galleries, and when I looked at Tribeca it’s even further away,” Lindemann told ARTnews. “Don’t get me wrong there’s a lot of really good galleries there. But the idea of the sort of ‘Great Jones neighborhood’ seemed more ‘Old New York’, and kind of retro. And Venus is a little retro.”

Lindemann started Venus Over Manhattan in 2012 and, since then, the gallery has worked to raise the reputations of underrecognized artists like Robert Colescott and Peter Saul. The new location’s opening show, a solo exhibition of work by Richard Mayhew, fits nicely with that approach. Mayhew is the only living member of the Spiral Group and, at 99-years-old, he “has never really had a major New York show, and really deserves one,” Lindemann said. “Perhaps that is hyperbolic, but he definitely deserves more attention than he’s been given. And he fits our kind of vibe.”

(Mayhew’s last solo gallery show, Richard Mayhew: Transcendence, was in 2020 at ACA Galleries.)

So does the neighborhood, which is an under-the-radar art destination. 55 Great Jones Street, where Venus opened a location in 2022, was once Andy Warhol’s studio and apartment. Jean Michel Basquiat also lived there from 1983 until his death in 1988. There are other galleries nearby as well. Quite a few. Eric Firestone, Aicon, and LaMama all have galleries on Great Jones between Lafayette and Bowery. Venus’s new location sits at 39 Great Jones Street.

The area may not be as trendy as TriBeCa but Lindemann sees that as a plus. “I don’t know if it’s a better competitive area you know?” Lindemann said. “More people will go to Chelsea on a Saturday, sure, but we have good foot traffic. And honestly, it feels like an opportunity. Rents in Chelsea, there’s a lot of vacancies because they went very high. And then Tribeca just jumped on the bandwagon and rents skyrocketed. Great Jones is a great opportunity. At the end of the day, it’s also a better neighborhood. It’s more fun to walk around.”

An underrated perk, according to Lindemann: much better restaurants than Chelsea.

Mayhew’s Natural Order, which opens May 6, will be the new gallery’s inaugural show.